Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
45. Metaphysics Book 8, Reading 5: How Matter and Form Are One, and an Introduction to Book 9 on Act and Ability
Class of 2005-10-20
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7a-wisdom-2005/045-metaphysics-book-8-reading-5-how-matter-and-form-are-one/

[0:00] We'll go to reading five now. Now, he said reading five is basically about the union of matter and form. He recalls what we were saying before about definitions and about numbers. What is the unity of them, right?

[0:25] And that was a question he kind of raised before, but he's going to solve it again, so to speak. In regard to the force of difficulty about definitions and about numbers, what is the cause of their being one thing? Now he says all things which have many parts,

[0:45] and which the whole is not, as the word just a heap, but the whole is something besides the parts. There is some cause. For even in bodies, contact is the cause of unity in some, and others stickiness or some such other affection some such other undergoing. And a definition is one speech, not by being bound together like the Iliad, but by being of one thing. Why then is it one and not many?

[1:18] For example, animal two-footed. He always gives the definition of man in the metaphysics: two-footed animal, right? They're a rational animal. So why is animal two-footed, not two things, right? Why are they one thing, right? The two-footed animal.

[1:39] And then the second paragraph, the first complete one on page eight, allusion to the Platonic problem, right? Further, if there are, as some say, these universals separated, right, from singulars, then there would be an animal itself and a two-footed itself, right? Why is not man these then? A Plato said that what man and dog and so on we partake of these universals, right? So if animal is one universal and two foot is another, then we're going to partake of two what?

[2:16] Universal. Yeah. And in general, man would not be one thing but many. He'd be animal and what two-footed. Okay, so that's that's the problem. What makes these things one? Definition and number, right? Okay, and then the second difficulty is one more for the Platonists, right, of whom he was one for twenty years, right, in the school Plato. Aristotle was there from seventeen to about thirty-seven. He left because Plato died.

[2:55] So you must have been one hell of a good teacher, there, Plato, right? Must have been a Of a good school if you spend twenty years there. Hmm. Spend twenty years with me.

[3:09] You're not a good, you're not a good, good enough Platonist. It was a very good school, right? And as I tell the students, and where does the academic world get its name? You know, where does the academy get its name? Oh yeah. Where does the academic program, the academic deans, get their name? Right. Well, the whole academic world is named from Plato's school. So, in the academic world, you should know something about Plato's school.

[3:35] huh? I said, "to one of my philosophical colleagues, How are your geometrical studies coming? " My geometrical studies. Yeah, you wouldn't get into the academy without that. They say that, over the entrance of the academy was the words academy was the words, "Let no one ignorant of geometry come in here. " So I said, you wouldn't get into it. The University of Paris, if you wanted to study theology, you had to be a master of the first book of Euclid at least.

[4:02] You wouldn't Get into the theology program without knowing the first book of Euclid. Okay, now in the third paragraph, the second complete one on page eight, he begins to what solve it again, right? It is clear then that if people proceed thus, as they are accustomed to define and speak, it will not be possible to answer and untie the difficulty. They're looking for some third thing to unite the matter and the what form, right?

[4:36] Huh? But if, as we say, this is matter and that is form, and this is an ability and that an act, so that one is merely the what act of the other's ability, right? What is sought would no longer seem a what difficulty. Okay.

[5:00] So the union of matter and form, you could say, is immediate, huh? In the sense of having no middle, right? Because one is merely the actuality of the other's ability. So it's not like two things in act, like the parts of the chair, right? That have to be glued together or screwed together or or something of that sort, right? You don't need something else to unite them.

[5:31] Now he's going to exemplify this a bit in natural things by comparison to artificial things, and then he'll talk a bit about it in mathematics, and then, strange as it may seem, he'll talk about um it in the things that have no matter. Okay.

[5:57] For this difficulty is the same as would arise if spherical bronze the definition of cloak. Now he takes bronze. I always take spherical clay myself as an example, right? So if you have clay in the shape of a what sphere, right?

[6:16] What unites the shape and the clay? Do you look for something to unite them? Do you glue together the shape and the clay? Or do you nail them together? Screw them together? Tape them together?

[6:37] Put a rope around them and pull them together? No, because the shape of the clay, right? And the clay are not like two actual things that have to have a third thing unite them, but the shape is the actuality of the ability of the clay to be a sphere. So the union is what immediate, yeah. And Aristotle brings this out when he talks about the soul, right?

[7:04] There is someone looking for a way to unite the soul with the body, huh? Not realizing the soul is the form of the body, and therefore the union is something immediate, huh?

[7:19] And he could speak of whatever it is that shapes the clay as being a cause, right? Okay, because it's reducing the ability to act. Well, it's not like there's an intrinsic thing uniting the two, huh?

[7:43] For this would be a sign of a definition, so that what is sought is the cause of sphere and bronze being one. But the difficulty no longer appears because the one is matter, the other form.

[8:01] Now, what is the cause of this, huh? Of what was a sphere and ability being actually a sphere? Besides the maker in those things of which there is coming to be. Okay, there's no intrinsic thing there uniting the two, huh? But you could say, in some sense, the the what the man who shaped the clay, huh? Shaped the wood, or whatever the material was, he's responsible for the union, right?

[8:28] But he's not in there between the two of them holding them together. They're united immediately. Now, in the next paragraph, he turns to the mathematical, and he says of matter, some is understandable and some sensible. Well, usually Aristotle will speak in two ways. Sometimes he'll say that there's no matter at all, right? In the definition of the geometrical sphere. So, if you had a material sphere, if I threw a rubber sphere against the wall here, it would what?

[9:12] Bounce back, right? If I threw a glass sphere against the wall, it might shatter, right? If I threw a metal sphere, it might go through the wall or stick in it, right? You see. But you couldn't say anything about the geometrical sphere, right? Okay. Or you know, if you dropped a helium balloon, it would go up, right? If you dropped a lead balloon it would go down.

[9:35] Or if you dropped a geometrical sphere? you can't say it goes up or down. There's no reference to motion. So matter in the ordinary sense and motion, there's no reference to them in the definition of the geometrical sphere. But if you wanted to speak of the extension, right, the length and the width and so on, or the length and the width and the depth, if you have a solid figure. you could speak of that as a kind of understandable matter Aristotle calls it, right?

[10:06] But maybe be better named imaginable matter, right? Okay, it's the extension that you have in in on a plane or in three dimensions in in geometry, and then you can say that

[10:23] triangle and square and circle and so on is like form in what a kind of imaginable matter, okay? And sphere and cube are in three dimensional imaginable matter, okay? So that's what he's speaking of here. Sometimes then he speaks of two kinds of matter. Of matter, some is understandable or imaginable, and some sensible. But I think use the word understandable. He wants to make sure it's something quite different, right?

[10:56] Okay. And always in the definition, this is matter and that act. For example, the circle is a plane figure, right? So it'd be plane. It's like the matter, right? And then you what give it a certain what shape? Okay.

[11:17] Now in the next paragraph, he's going to allude now to the things that are what property of science, right? Things that don't have either sensible matter or understandable matter, right? And they are just what forms, forms, okay? Like Boethius says, "Divina substantia Forma est." Divine substance is form, understand? But whatever things have no matter or have either

[11:52] understandable matter or sensible matter are right away each something one, right? Okay, just as being itself, huh? It's right away individual substance. How how much? Now Thomas says that's a reference to what

[12:11] the distinction, making comparison here to the distinction of being according to the ten highest genera. Okay. Well, what a thing is its size, right? Right away they are what something distinct, huh? They're not as if being is being determined by a difference here, right? Being is not really genus, right? Okay. So being, you might say, right away means either substance or how quality or how much quantity, right?

[12:43] One of the ten, right? He says that's the way these separated substances are, right? They're right away what they are, and not through some matter being formed, right? And so they're right away through themselves something one. Rather than what they are through a form that comes to a matter, right, and makes them to be one this or one that, okay. Whence, there is no other cause of being one for any of these, meaning intrinsic cause now, nor there being a being and act.

[13:21] In the case of you and me and anything material, right, the material is a man or a dog or in other cases it doesn't matter, a triangle or a circle, only an ability, right, and through the form it's actually one or the other, right, and this matter could be many things, but it's one thing to its form, right? So it has being an act and unity to its form, and not what right away being unity, because the matter doesn't have being an act, right?

[14:03] Nor is it one this or one that until it gets the form that makes it to be one this or one that. But these immaterial things would be just what forms, and therefore they would be right away immediately, right? Both beings an act and something what one, okay? There'd be no cause within them of their being, ah, or their being one, but they are through themselves beings and one, right?

[14:39] Okay, intrinsically, right? Okay. With with with with angels though, where their being is caused, couldn't you couldn't you say that there is some type of composition in them? There a composition between essence and existence, yeah, yeah, and that's caused by by God. But this this composition of substance and existence is not the same thing as other forms. Yeah, yeah. Aristotle hasn't yet pointed out yet, you know.

[15:07] Mm-hmm. But it'd be something different from matter and form, right? Yeah. Okay. So you see, the substance of the angel is just form, right? Mm-hmm. And through this form, he's actually what he is, right? Yeah. And he's one kind of thing, huh? But the form is what he is. Mm-hmm. See, why our form is not the whole of us, right? Mm-hmm. But the form is something that comes to our matter, and through that form, our matter is actually a man and actually one thing, okay?

[15:41] So he's hitting at the idea that they'd be different, huh? Mm-hmm. Now, now the the last two paragraphs are just hitting them again with the. Difficulty people get into who don't understand right this business of how matter and form are one and how a fortiori, what is just a form is one

[16:12] because of this difficulty some speak of participation and that's what the Platonists do right and ask what is the cause of participation and what it is to participate

[16:27] and others speak of being together as Lycophon says knowledge is of knowing in the soul others say that living is putting together or binding together the soul of the body

[16:43] is that true then you're looking for a third thing right to unite the soul and the body right but the body that has the soul it is alive right and through having the soul it is alive I think I mentioned how sometimes Aristotle would distinguish four senses of whole and part they're in the fifth book of wisdom and two of these wholes and parts are more in the mind and two of them are in things so in the mind you have the whole called a definition the genus and the differences right and then in the mind you have what they call the universal whole

[17:35] so sometimes we say that the the general is like a whole and the particular is like a part and the word particular as you can see comes from the word part so it seems like it's a different sense of whole and part so in one sense you could say that Aristotle points out in the fifth book you could say that animal in one sense is a part of man let's say part of the definition of man as a rational animal or something like this or a two-footed animal but in another sense what man is a part of animal right that wouldn't make any sense if it was the same kind of what part and whole right?

[18:20] But then he speaks of two kinds of wholes and parts in things and one would be more the quantitative parts and the other would be the whole of what matter and form so he says part of my parts well my head and my arms and legs and all my organs and so on that's one kind of whole and part right I'm composed of these parts right these quantitative parts but in other sense I'm composed of a what body and soul

[18:55] and obviously that's a different sense of whole and part And sometimes take the simple example of the word "cat" that you've heard me say before, right? You probably see C A and T, the three letters as the parts of the word "cat," right? And they seem to be all the parts, right? But then, when you compare the word "cat" and the word "act," you might say, "Well, in another sense, you could say that the parts of the word 'cat' are the letters and the order of the letters.

[19:26] It's put together from these letters, but also certain order of those letters, right? And the word 'act' is put together from the same letters, but a different order, right? That's a different sense of whole part than the quantitative ones, huh? And Aristotle in the

[19:48] in two places where he's talking about the whole and part, like in the dialectic we mentioned of the third book of wisdom, where he's saying that if you want to get to the To know a thing well, you got to take it apart, right? But there's a number of ways to take it apart. Of course, by the different senses of whole and part. And he gives three ways, right?

[20:14] He leaves out this one into matter and form. Why does he do that? Well, as if these are the ones that people think about first, huh? And when he's talking about in the first chapter of physics, when he's talking about how

[20:33] we know things in a confused way before we know them distinctly, and therefore we know the whole before we distinguish the parts. Well, three of the four kinds of whole and parts come up in the way he proceeds, but the matter and form doesn't. And that's in the sense the most important for natural philosophy, right? He doesn't bring that out until much later on in book book three, huh?

[20:57] I mean, book one of the natural hearing physics. So it seems to be some difficulty for us to understand that, huh? And I discovered years ago when I was studying Thomas here in the fourth book of the physics there.

[21:19] He's distinguishing and ordering the eight senses of in and out, okay? And he puts genus, species, and genus before form and matter. See, that's awfully strange, right? Because species and genus—that's talking about things up in the mind, right? Like form and matter is something out here in the sensible world, and yet in the order of the senses of in and out, species and genus comes before form and matter.

[21:55] Now, if you see the order of them, you'll see why that that is so. Because species and genus is like part and whole, and the senses right before that are part and whole. But apart from from the order going back to the beginning of the word, when you stop and ask somebody, right? You know, and you say to him, now suppose you have a a piece of clay in the shape of a sphere, and you mold it into a cube, right?

[22:31] You say, well, change it right? What has changed? The clay or its shape? What would the average person answer? The shape. Yeah. See. Now, is it the shape that has changed? See. You say the shape has changed. You're falsely imagining the genus shape to be, as it were, changing from spherical shape. to cubical shape, as if the genus is changing from one species to the other. Is that what's going on?

[23:04] No, it's the clay that is changing, albeit accidentally, right? It's not changing substantially, but it's the clay that was a sphere that now is a cube. It's the clay that's changing, right? But people will invariably say when you ask them, they'll say the shape has changed, as if the genus has changed from one species to the other, right? So they're falling back upon the sense in which the species is in the genus rather than what form and matter.

[23:32] As if some of that way of speaking is hard to understand. It's kind of strange, but that's what they'll do. When men go from young to old,

[23:57] is the man different or is the age different? You know. Or when you go from sick to healthy, right? We might say your condition has changed, right?

[24:18] We sometimes say his condition has has changed for the worse, or the better, or what it is, right? Okay. Well, condition is really like the genus of health and sickness, right? Good and bad condition. So you are saying the condition, the genus, has changed from one species to the other, right? Well, it's not the condition.

[24:41] It's the man or the body which is changed from being sick to being healthy, or vice versa. So you'll find that this is a sign. you see, we'll fall back upon the earlier meaning of the word when you are trying to speak of a later meaning, and that's a sign that the earlier meaning really is more known to us, and we tend to fall back, and we can't quite get to the next sense.

[25:08] Happens again and again with these words. In Plato's, sometimes you know they speak as if place were like the matter of things, right? And just as you know one shape is in the clay and then another shape is in the clay, right? So in the same places, not one body and then another body, right? So that the place seems to be to the two bodies that are successively in it, like the clay is to the two shapes that are successively in it, right?

[25:55] Well, there you're falling all the way back upon the first sense of in, which is to be in what? In place, yeah. So hyle right? Problems are not unique to him.

[26:21] Yet the same account he says would apply to all. Now notice how, how, how in English we might borrow the Latin word, kind of conceding a bit, huh? Um, we might say that man is composed of a what?

[26:47] Body and soul, right? Okay. Now let's speak English. What's the English word for composed? To come together. Yeah. Now you're putting together body and soul, right? Huh? You're putting together matter and form, huh? But notice those words put together kind of imply what? They kind of a spatial meaning, huh? You know, you know. I put together the glass here with my briefcase here, right? You know, putting together, right?

[27:28] Putting together, right? Okay. Um. Even you know with difference in genus, huh? The word difference and the Greek word that corresponding to diaphora, they have the same etymology. What does diaphora mean? Or difference mean? Well, phero means to carry, right? And dia apart, right? So to carry apart, right? So I carried apart now the glass in my briefcase. That's the difference, does right? Huh? As if the genus is kind of the common place in which the two species are thrown together, right?

[28:14] And then you add the differences and that carries them apart, huh? So you can see that, right? Um. You put together the matter and form, right? It's the little straining of the meaning there, right? Huh? It's taking on a somewhat different meaning from what it usually means, huh? Okay. When you buy things nowadays, sometimes you have to put them together yourself, right? You go down and get a get a grill or something like that, you know, and they have a price assembled and a price not assembled.

[28:54] It's nice to be divided up a little. You run into some of your problems trying to put together, right? When trying to put together each of these things is what. Actual and distinct, one from another, right? And you put together, and you put this in there, and you screw this onto this, and so on. And once you identify the parts and make sure they're all there, and so on.

[29:16] So that's what you do with matter and form, right? You take the form here and you take the matter here, and then you bring them together, right, in the same place, more or less. Not quite the same way.

[29:32] As I was mentioning with Socrates' first argument, the real weakness in the argument is not so much what Aristotle is pointing out here about vinegar and wine, right? But the idea that he's thinking of the soul leaving the body, kind of what man leaving his house by comparison, right, or a man leaving a car and then coming back into the house, coming back into the car, right?

[29:55] Okay. And maybe, huh? Maybe not. the. Human soul, but maybe with the animal soul or something else, it's a little bit like taking a piece of clay, right, and shaping it into a sphere, and then what, shaping it into a cube, and then shaping it back into a sphere, right? Okay, Well you don't take the shape out of the clay and put it over here, and then later on pick it up again and put it back in again, right?

[30:26] It's not like you, you know, you've got a round hole or a square hole, and, you take something out and you put it back in again, right?

[30:36] a cap and a bottle or something, you know, take it out, put it back in. So if it's going back from dead to alive, or or at least none-living to living, right? Maybe that you're what transforming the matter back, right? In which case you'd have a similar form, but not the same form that you had before. Numerically, the same, individually the same. In which case, the soul would not be immortal, right?

[31:05] So, but Plato's argument kind of is based, or Socrates' first argument is maybe kind of based upon kind of a false imagination of what it means.

[31:25] When you say you've lost your health, you know, a thing has lost its shape or something. You start losing your keys, right? You lose your keys. They're somewhere. I don't know where, but I pray to St. Anthony and you go find them. But when you lose your health, is it somewhere? People sometimes

[31:52] say, "I don't know where my youth's gone or something." right? I haven't gone anywhere. except he's speaking. but our ways of speaking in that way?

[32:08] Even you speak of becoming, coming into existence, going out of existence. The words "coming" and "going" are taken from change of place. So it's like existence was a house you come into it and you go out of it. You can't imagine that way, right? It goes back to the original meaning, but coming into existence and going out of existence is much different from coming into a house and going out of it.

[32:33] Existence is not like a place you come into. Just like Shakespeare saying, "All the world's a stage," right? and all the characters will say, you know, I've got to play your part. My part is a sad part or something," you know, and that's the thing.

[32:58] Okay, so you got to watch out about putting things together, right? Okay, things that don't belong together. But again, what that expression means. So in the last paragraph, he says, "The cause is that they seek a reason making one and a difference of ability and act. But as has been said, the last matter, the proximate matter, and the form are the same and one. The one in ability and the other in act.

[33:25] The one is the act, of the other ability. So it's like seeking the cause of something one, and of its being one. For each thing is something one, and what is in ability, and what is an act are in some way one. So the cause of their being together, being one, is nothing other besides what is moving it from ability to what act.

[33:51] Whatever things have no matter are all simply something one, right? Okay. So, enough for book what eight of wisdom, right? Okay. Now let me pass out here just a few words. Passes around. Okay. Need more copies? Two more, you want more? Enough. At least take three if you want.

[35:00] Thank you. Now, wisdom, as you may recall, is about being as being, right? And as Aristotle points out when he shows us in the beginning of Book Four,

[35:22] being doesn't mean one thing, right? Well, how can there be then one reasoned out knowledge of being as being? Well, as he points out, there is a what multiplicity of meanings of being, but they're connected. And what he emphasized in the beginning of the fourth book was the connection of being with what substance, okay? Because some things are said to be because they are substances, the existence by themselves and in themselves themselves.

[36:01] Others are said to be beings because of something of substance, like the accident of the substance. Other things are said to be because of the coming to be or the passing away of a substance or accident, and some things even said to be because of the lack of something, like blindness. Right is said to be right, and as a reference to accidents, it's the lack of the ability to see.

[36:29] So on, but then when he got to the fifth book of wisdom, he gave a more complete, you might say, distinction of the senses of being. And the fundamental distinction that he gave there was into being by happening.

[36:47] And being by itself or through itself, right? Okay. And then, under being through itself or by itself, he distinguished being according to the figures of what predication, substance, quantity, quality, and so on. Right. And then being as what true right,

[37:15] which includes those things which are really. Sometimes are not really beings at all in the world out there. Okay, so take nothing for example, right? You can say nothing is nothing. Is that true? I think so. Yeah, yeah. So I use the word "is" there, right? Well, what is nothing? Nothing, right? You see, so the mind takes nothing, though, as if it were what something, right? But something only in the mind, on the way the mind conceives it, right?

[38:02] So being as true, he says, right? And we can maybe truly say about some man that he is blind, right? Um, but to be blind is that really to be something, or is really not to be right? To lack something. Yeah, yeah, but yet it seems to be true to say that this man is blind, or this man is deaf, right? Or this student is ignorant, right?

[38:32] Okay, but ignorance is really the non-being of something in a subject able to have knowledge but doesn't have it, right? Okay, and then he gave last but not least the division or distinction of being viability and act. Okay, and this. Kind of crisscrosses the division of being according to the figures of predication, because you can speak of a built-in act in all of these ten genera. But this is a different way of distinguishing being, huh?

[39:11] Now, as you may recall, in the sixth book of wisdom, after he finally finishes stabilizing the subject of wisdom and separating it from the other forms of reasoned-out knowledge and so on, then he recalls all these distinctions of being in the fifth book, huh? And he, in the rest of book six, considers briefly accidental being, being by happening, and being as true, right? But he says neither one of these are the main concern of the wise man.

[39:51] Accidental being is not going to be his main concern in general, because no. reason of knowledge talks about the accidental. It seems, and but accidental being hardly is, right? Right.

[40:13] To be a geometer is to be something. To be a Christian is to be something, right? But to be a Christian geometer, is that really something.

[40:27] Do those two come together and make something a Christian geometer, like matter and form? No, they're both forms, right? Um. So accidental being hardly is. So the science of being as being—are you going to talk about that really? No.

[40:49] and being as true seems to include things that have being only in the mind, right? And uh therefore doesn't seem to be the fundamental being in things, right? So he has a brief consideration of those two in Book Six, but he lays them aside as not being the chief concern of the what? Metaphysician. The science of being as being, yeah. Addition. Okay. But then, in books seven, eight, and nine, he wants to take up the two main considerations of being or distinctions of being.

[41:27] Being according to figures of predication in Book Seven and Eight, and then being as act and ability in Book Nine. But as he points out in the beginning of Book Seven,

[41:42] among the figures of predication or being according to figures of predication, the main one is substance, right? So Book Seven and Eight are mainly about substance.

[41:54] But in Book Seven, which we didn't read, he proceeds more from things in logic that I said about substance and so on. And then Book Eight here, in terms of natural philosophy, matter and form, okay. Now in Book Nine he's going to talk about the distinction of being and act and ability. Now,

[42:18] Book Nine. To begin with, is divided kind of looking like what we saw in Book Eight. He's going to talk about ability in the first part of Book Nine. In the second part, he's going to talk about act, right? In the third part, he's going to talk about the order mainly of act and ability, the before and after of them. Okay. Now, that's a little bit of an oversimplification, but it's good to hear it because you get kind of a sense of how the book is going to proceed.

[43:04] But those first two parts, you look at them more closely. You'll see that in the first part, which is mainly about ability, it's not about every ability, right? But about ability in reference to motion, which is the act what most known to us. Although it's the act which is least actual, it's most known to us.

[43:36] So in the first part, he's mainly concerned with ability in act as they are found in motion and things that are subject to motion.

[43:49] But he doesn't spend much time talking about motion as such because that's done a lot in the philosophy of nature. But he does talk about ability in reference to motion.

[44:02] And then in the second part, where the emphasis is upon act, he's going to see act in a much broader understanding than just what motion. He's going to see form as being act as well as motion. huh? he's going to see operations like understanding and willing and even sensing. but not really motions in the strict sense, huh? So he's going to see act in a completely universal way.

[44:39] And since ability is known to act, he's going to see senses of ability in the second part as a consequence of seeing new senses of act that he had not seen in the first part, right? So you can say that in a way, in going from the first part to the second part, he's in a way going from a more particular consideration of ability and act to a more general consideration.

[45:10] From a less universal consideration of ability and act, right, as they're found in in the things around us, things that move and change, to a completely universal, a most universal consideration of ability and act in the second part.

[45:32] And I think this is characteristic of wisdom to go from to some extent the less universal to the more universal. But it's much more clear here in the ninth book that that's the way wisdom goes. than when you're talking, say, about substance in books seven and eight, huh? Although to some extent you can see that in books seven and eight, he's beginning from the substances that we all know about, material substances, right?

[46:08] And he's kind of rising right from material substance to understanding of substance in general, and even something might be said about those immaterial substances, huh? Okay.

[46:24] Like we just seeing in one of the last readings we did there, where he went from matter and form, right, to natural things, and then to matter and form in mathematics, and then form without matter, right? Okay. And this is the other aspect of natural philosophy. You're going towards the immaterial. Now, in both of these ways, as we've mentioned, I think before, wisdom seems to be contrary in its way of proceeding to a natural philosophy, because as Aristotle explicitly shows in the Proemium to the eight books of Natural Hearing, the so-called Physics, we go from the general to particular natural philosophy, from more universal to less universal, and we go towards matter.

[47:13] So as you go forward in natural philosophy, you're going down into matter towards matter, and that's important to realize because this is part of the problem with the modern scientists, right? They're in the latter parts of natural philosophy, right? And so they're going towards matter, so they kind of are accustomed to think of everything in terms of matter. They are materialists, right? By custom, if not by thought, right?

[47:47] And of course, even the Greek natural philosophers, you can see that, you know, the first men are kind of materialists, huh? Matter is being everything, but if you're really immersed in matter, that's everything to you, huh? It seems to be everything, huh? Okay.

[48:05] So in the ninth book, you see these two aspects of the order of consideration in wisdom, huh? As you go from the first part to the second part, you're going from a more a less universal consideration of act and ability to a more universal consideration of act and ability, and a more universal consideration of act and ability to help you to understand act even in the immaterial things, not just in the things that change, huh?

[48:39] And that are composed of matter and form, and then in the third part of the ninth book, you'll consider the order, the before and after, right, of act and ability, and there you'll find out how, in almost every way, act is before ability, and once you understand that. Then you have the beginning for finding out what the first cause is and what the first being is. But the first cause, the first being, is going to be pure act, right?

[49:21] It's not going to be matter, right? Okay. But we'll also see in that third part why some people might think that matter is the first thing and that matter is the first being. We'll see the kind of mistake they're making, right? It's the second kind of mistake outside of words they're making. A very common kind of mistake that's made. Aristotle talks about the main kinds of mistakes, the common kinds of mistakes in all the sciences in the. uh Books uh on submissive refutations huh and he distinguishes six kinds of mistakes from words, right, and seven mistakes kinds of mistakes outside of words, and

[50:18] this fundamental mistake about the beginning of things is one of the second kind, okay. So we'll see that in the third part, so I know myself, you know, over the years, and I teach the metaphysics of Aristotle here, and you can't do obviously all the books in one semester course like when you do that in college, but I always, you know, it's like first the ninth book, right, among the books on being and one, which are books six, seven, eight, nine, especially seven, eight, nine, ten.

[50:57] You can't do all those four books, but if I do one of them, I always do book nine, because there you can see most clearly how an understanding of being as being, how an understanding of in particular of the division of being into act and ability, right, will enable you to go all the way to the first cause, which is the ultimate goal of natural philosophy and the ultimate goal of the philosopher, right, okay.

[51:33] But that third part there, where he talks about the before and after, will show that not only in time and causality and so on is act before ability, but also that it's better than ability, right, and so very naturally Aristotle comes to the conclusion that the first cause is pure act, and that is the best thing there is, okay.

[52:04] Why those who think of matter as being the beginning of all things, and therefore being the first cause, ability is not as good as act, so the first cause is not the best thing, right, but now you have what I call schizophrenia in the life of the mind, because the end or goal of our thinking can be shown by course of argument to be the first cause,

[52:38] because we begin by knowing effects, but we naturally seek to know why these effects are the way they are, so we naturally seek to know their cause, and if the cause has a cause, we seek naturally to know the cause of the cause, and so the end would seem to be a knowledge of the first cause. That's the end of our thinking. But then, by a separate argument, the argument starting from what Aristotle points out in the proemium to the study of the soul, right?

[53:13] He points out, and in the beginning of the parts of animals, where he's more precise, where he says that knowledge of a better thing is better knowledge. Okay,

[53:27] so since the end is always better than what is for the sake of it, right? Then the end of all our knowledge must be a knowledge of what is better than everything else. It must be a knowledge of the best thing. Well, now is the end of all our knowledge a knowledge of the first cause or a knowledge of the best thing? It's reason to say both, right?

[53:52] Well, if the first cause is also the best thing there is, well then, Aristotle says in the beginning of the Metaphysics in truth, all things harmonize, everything fits together. But if the first cause is not the best thing, well, then you got two what? Two ends, right? That don't come together, right? So now you got schizophrenia, right? You know, this is the modern thing, yeah. That schizophrenia, the thing they can't they can't get out of this

[54:26] because they think that matter is the first cause, right? And matter is ability rather than act, and ability is for the sake of act. So the act is better than the ability.

[54:40] No, they can't. They're completely trapped, right? They can't put harmony and unity together again. By Aristotle, because it's so very natural, right? That God is pure act.

[55:00] Therefore, he's better than everything else. Now, someone says, "Why should you think about God? " Right? You know, I probably begin to answer that question by saying, "I can't think of anything better to think about. " Okay, but then you might go and say more precisely, "Well, how much better is it to think about God than think about anything else? "

[55:37] Well, if it's better to think about God because God is better than other things, then the question of how much better is it to think about God than something else requires you to understand well how much better is he than other things. You know, is he ten times better, or a hundred times better, or a thousand times better, or a billion times better? Well, no matter what ratio you might take, he'd be.

[56:04] Much better than that. So the question becomes eventually that: Why should you think about God, but why should you think about anything else? Good question, right?

[56:22] And there is really no reason to think about anything else, unless thinking about something else helps you to think about God. Albert the Great, my my old teacher, Kasurik, who translated the commentary of Thomas on the first two books of the physics. But something that you have in the beginning a little passage from Albert the Great, and he says that

[56:49] if you think about anything else besides God, right, except for the purpose of being able to think about God, you have a perverse attitude towards knowing. Unless you'd be forced to by some necessity, if you are a doctor, you may have to think about something, right, some practical reason, right. But you are pursuing knowledge for its own sake. You want to think about other things, so you can think about God, right?

[57:20] Okay. So you have to think about, say, the human soul, and think about our understanding and our will, and so on, before you can think about the understanding and will of an angel or and and God. And you have to think about actability. Let's see, huh? Before you can think about God, huh? So

[57:49] there are other things we have to think about before we can think about God. We think about God as well as we can after we thought about these other things, right?

[58:00] But you have to kind of justify that, right? I think you'll see when you study actability how this is very important for that understanding God, so far as we can understand God. Can't understand it too well, huh? But

[58:29] we know more what he is not than what he is, right? Okay. But we have to understand, you know, what he is not before we understand him as not being what he is not. So you have to understand, right?

[58:45] I say to students in natural philosophy, we're going to try to understand change, right? I say to them, if you don't understand change, you can't understand changing things. If you don't understand changing things, you can't understand unchanging things, because as the word unchanging indicates, you know those by the negation of changing things. And if you don't know changing things or unchanging things, you don't know anything. So from first to last, you don't understand change.

[59:15] You don't know nothing. And you guys may think you understand change, but you really don't. And so you don't understand anything without this course. They tell us. I may be a bit of exaggeration, but it sounds pretty good. But there's a lot of truth there, right? So

[59:41] you see, unless you understand matter and form and how our our mind or reason's own object is that what it is is something you can sense or imagine, you don't even know why we use words like the abstract and the concrete saying to talk about God. You can't really. Appreciate the way we have to talk about God and the corrections we have to make because of our way of knowing so inadequate to him.

[1:00:14] Now, God knows composed things in a simple way. We know simple things in a composed way, right? And just like you know, we turn on the point, and the point has no parts, right?

[1:00:30] As you go from you know, even from the body to the surface to the line to the point, you keep on adding negations, right? The body has length and width and depth. The surface has length and width, but no depth. The line has length, but no width or depth. And the point has neither length nor width. nor depth. So as it gets simpler, you seem to involve more negations.

[1:00:51] So it's not surprising, even considering the point, that if God is altogether simple, that is going to be no implied negative, right? So although the treatise the question of simplicity of God, although grammatically speaking, simple is not negative, right? When Thomas shows that God is altogether simple, he will negate all these kinds of composition that you find in the creature, and then finally negate composition altogether, right?

[1:01:21] So God is not put together, right? All the rest of us are more or less, some of us more, some of us, put together, right?

[1:01:37] So next week we'll begin meeting one here. okay, Take our time. But Book Nine is useful, you know, not just to arrive at the first cause. Useful for understanding all kinds of things.